Let's face it.
It's a tough year for thank yous.
It's not that there aren't things . . . or events . . . for which we should be grateful. God has not taken a holiday and His ever inscrutable ways still leave us bounty and beauty in considerable measure. One of my best friends, a Jesuit priest teaching at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, routinely posts photos on Facebook in his Ignatian search for God in the everyday.
And he finds Her . . .
In the flowers, fauna, pristine snowfalls, gritty urban walls and antique gargoyles he happens upon in his jaunts through the New York (City and State) he has called home for seventy plus years and the New England his brother has called home for more than forty. At one point last year, I commented that he was the Gerard Manley Hopkins of photographers. "Nature is never spent," wrote Hopkins in God's Grandeur, and this 21st century Jesuit's photos prove what that 19th century Jesuit's poem recounted.
So, thank you God.
Now, could the rest of us step it up a bit.
As we approach the end of 2019, it strikes me as somewhat odd . . . or sad . . . or at least puzzling . . . that approximately 40% of my fellow citizens still approve of our President and do not want him removed. There is no point in rehearsing the grounds for why he must go -- soliciting a bribe from Ukraine's president, obstructing Mueller's investigation, the thousands of lies, the recourse to the gutter whenever criticized. "Facts are a stubborn thing," said John Adams.
But why do so many fail to see it?
I do not think it's ignorance.
Either mine . . .
Or theirs.
As to the absence of mine, on the latest contretemps, there is no real dispute that Trump demanded political dirt on the Bidens and held up military and other assistance to the Ukraine in an effort to get it. Anyone who watched those House Intelligence Committee hearings last week could not miss that reality. Even his own guy -- the hotelier cum million dollar donor and (later) Ambassador to the EU-- was explicit: "I know that members of this committee frequently frame these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a 'quid pro quo'? . . . [T]he answer is yes."
Sondland would not take a dive for Trump.
And in refusing to do so, he merely confirmed what the half dozen erstwhile deep staters -- Taylor, Kent, Yovanovitch, Vindman, Hill and Holmes -- more than suspected.
Trump's errand boy -- Rudy Giuliani -- was hijacking foreign policy for his boss's (illegal) benefit.
This is impeachable. It is a form of bribery, which the impeachment clause explicitly lists as a ground. It goes to the core problem for which the Founders fashioned impeachment as the remedy -- their fear that the country's chief executive might tie his interests to those of a foreign state and in so doing repudiate ours. And even if it is not impeachable, it is seriously wrong and counts as yet another minus in Trump's extraordinarily long column of demerits.
So I am not wrong here.
But the 40% who still stand with Trump can't all be stupid, and the vast (and I mean vast) majority aren't. Like me, they go to work, raise families, pay bills, maintain relationships, generally distinguish right from wrong, know that the earth revolves around the sun, will concede it is raining out if someone comes in with a dripping umbrella, and agree that 2 + 2 = 4.
They're not inherently mean, nor do they confuse authenticity with dishonesty or vulgarity.
And they aren't blind.
Which, perhaps, creates the greatest conundrum.
Because, say what you will about Trump, he does not hide his malfeasance.
So, what gives?
Why are 40% of my neighbors always giving Trump a pass?
I think it's ennui.
I get there mostly by process of elimination. Having discounted ignorance, the next available candidates are the Fox network and self-interested politicians.
According to surveys, about 2.8 million tune into Fox every day. There are, however, 153 million registered voters. As a matter of simple arithmetic, 40% of them are not watching Fox. This doesn't mean Fox's bias has no influence. It has a lot, just not enough to explain the views of 61.2 million people. And as for the politicians, the reality is that pols follow voters. It's rarely the other way around. If the voters change, the politicians will change . . .
Or they'll lose.
Ennui is defined as weariness, dissatisfaction. It manifests as boredom. We all have experienced it. If you've ever had a bad job (check) . . . or a bad marriage (check) . . . there comes a point in time when you are just tired of it all. My ex-wife told a friend of hers that she knew our marriage was over when I stopped fighting. No kidding. And in that sad interregnum between the knowledge that things are bad and the energy to enact the solution that might be good . . .
One gets weary.
According to polls, a sizable group of Trumpers only support him "somewhat." Those who "strongly approve" of him account for no more than 25% of the electorate, and in September a poll found that 69% actually dislike him personally. With Trump, therefore, and in particular with his supporters, I suspect we are in that interregnum, somewhere between the bad and the not-by-any-means-inevitable possibilities of either removal by impeachment or removal by defeat. In other words, we are in a period of . . .
Ennui.
Which can become permanent.
Just ask Camus.
Life for my Jesuit friend in Syracuse is not all roses. The city and region are economically depressed. There's more than enough grounds for ennui.
That, however, is not the Ignatian way, the Jesuit way.
To the contrary, their encounter with weariness seems to spur them on.
The Jesuit motto is AMDG. It is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase "Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam". I translate that as "toward the greater glory of God". That's "toward", not "for". It conveys that faith is active, not passive; that we have to work at it, not wait for it.
In Syracuse, the Jesuits have created Le Moyne College, the little engine that could. Founded in 1946, it ranks second in New York and sixth nationally for value in its class, colleges with 2,500 to 10,000 students. Thirty per cent of its undergraduates are first-generation college students.
It's president is Dr. Linda LeMura, a Syracuse native, child of immigrants, and first ever lay female president of any Jesuit educational institution in the western hemisphere. Reflecting "what the Jesuits have refined in 500 years of scholarship and reflection," she explains that "my story, and the story of my family, is also the story of Le Moyne College. Whether from humble origins or great wealth, immigrant or native born, we are united in our belief that education is an act of faith, an expression of confidence and calm in the face of the unknown."
"An act of faith, an expression of confidence and calm in the face of the unknown."
It sounds an awful lot like what was produced in 1776 and 1787 . . .
By the Founders.
They looked ennui in the eye . . .
And beat it.
So can we.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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